AMD Revives FX Brand for Gaming and HD Media Enthusiasts

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At E3 in California, AMD has announced the rebirth of its enthusiast and aficionado brand: FX. Last seen in 2006 on Socket AM2, FX was AMD’s moniker for its fastest and most expensive CPUs — but now it’s a much broader brand that encompasses entire platforms, rather than chips themselves. FX isn’t just about gamers, either: AMD is also targeting “HD media enthusiasts.”

The first platform to feature FX branding will be called Scorpius, which should make its debut in the next couple of months. Scorpius is a combination of AMD’s new 8-core 32nm Zambezi, Bulldozer-based CPU, and the 6000-series Radeon graphics cards. To be honest, thanks to AMD’s rather odd nomenclature, it’s not entirely clear whether you’ll be able to buy FX-branded Zambezi CPUs or graphics cards, or whether it will be reserved for OEMs that manufacture computers based on the new Scorpius platform. FX might simply be a badge that gets stuck on the front of new computers, similar to the company’s Vision program.

Irrespective of AMD’s penchant for impractical product names, though, the fact that the FX brand is making a return is big news. AMD retired the FX brand around the same time that it fell behind Intel in terms of raw power — and its return could signify that AMD is ready to yet again compete with Intel in the high-end and enthusiast markets.

While the press release certainly sounds like AMD is onto something — it’s packed full of hyperbolic phrases like “unlocked,” “over-the-top,” and “native” — we should remember that leaked benchmarks show performance that is only comparable to Intel’s older i7 chips. Still, for pre-production silicon, that’s not bad — and if Zambezi can be tuned to match Intel’s newer chips, while keeping Phenom’s aggressive pricing, the FX brand might actually make a comeback.